Astonishing, amusing, witty: The “Featured Editions” at the imm cologne in Hall 2.2 and 3.2 constantly invited the visitors to make a “creative stop” and concern themselves with design over and above unit sales figures and RoIs – as the 14 installations showed just how intensely and creatively designers and manufacturers interact. The format is now in its fourth edition as jointly supported and curated by Stylepark together with Dick Spierenburg and his team at Koelnmesse.

The circus arena dreamed up by Italian designer trio Cazzaniga Mandelli Pagliarulo for Pedrali could certainly hold its own against the real one at Circus Roncalli; the boule messieurs by Sebastian Herkner and Pulpo may be carton, but the originals do indeed live in France – as a photographer documented who headed there specially to find the most typical of all players. And for Zeitraum the young designer duo Kaschkasch from Cologne dissected with a precise eye their new “Rail” table – a perfect piece for the copy-cats, however, who swiftly set about photographing the mechanism. Whereas a few podium further down Philipp Mainzer at e15 would gladly have drawn their teeth … (as)